


a more perfect synthesis

by polkadot



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cultural Differences, F/F, Starfleet Academy, War wounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-08
Updated: 2017-02-08
Packaged: 2018-09-22 20:27:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9624137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/polkadot/pseuds/polkadot
Summary: It was a warm, sunny day at Starfleet Academy, and Jaylah was pissed.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rosecake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosecake/gifts).



It was a warm, sunny day at Starfleet Academy, and Jaylah was pissed.

Pissed at Marta for being an inconsiderate roommate and landing them in this ‘interpersonal conflict’. Pissed at Starfleet for making her have a roommate in the first place – fuck this “teaches cadets to live in a crew environment” – when they _knew_ her history and why having someone living in her space (much less someone like Marta) would be problematic. Pissed at this upperclass ‘peer counselor’ Starfleet was forcing her to talk to, because she set the meeting for an off-campus coffee shop and made Jaylah walk all the way over here. Pissed at her own fucking uniform, for that matter, because Jaylah hated ironing, and in Starfleet hers never seemed to ‘pass muster’.

Ever since coming to Starfleet, it sometimes felt like Jaylah’s entire life was being put in scare quotes. Everyone else – and not just the humans! – somehow knew what they were doing. Diverse experiences and cultures flowed into one harmonious whole, all combining to form a more perfect synthesis and leading to steady Federation progress.

Well, fuck that. Pretty words weren’t helping _Jaylah_ synthesize, and no matter how many peer counselors they sent her to, or how many demerits or reprimands they put in her file, she was still always going to be a square peg in a round hole.

She scanned the coffee shop, her lips tightly pursed. Her peer counselor was a computer tech, they’d said. Jaylah only knew the upperclass engineers, and none of them were half as friendly as Scotty. Sure, it’d only been a month, but fuck, she’d felt at home with Scotty within an hour. If there’d been some sort of ‘credential in the field’ program that would’ve let her stay on the Enterprise and get her certs by learning hands-on with Scotty, she never would’ve come here. But there wasn’t, so here she was.

There. That must be her. The Orion by the window, a broad smile wreathing her face, her hand raised in welcome. Technically that gesture was a potent aspersion on the honor of one’s parents on Jaylah’s homeworld, but Jaylah had long since stopped actively noticing things like that. They’d faded to an omnipresent rasp in the back of her mind, like the scratch of sandpaper on skin.

“Hello,” she said, sliding into the booth across from the Orion. She could hear the surly ungraciousness in her voice, but well, it wasn’t like they were meeting up for a date, or like any of this was _Jaylah’s_ idea. “Gaila?”

The Orion nodded, still smiling. She seemed undaunted by Jaylah’s less-than-friendly attitude. “And you must be Jaylah.”

“As you see,” Jaylah said, than abruptly wished she could take it back. She hadn’t meant – but then Jaylah had a bad tendency of saying exactly what came into her mind, without stopping to think about it. In her culture, such bluntness was valued; you always knew exactly where you were. Starfleet culture seemed to think her bluntness was horrifying.

(Telling that charmer that he certainly couldn’t study with her because it was crystal clear that what he wanted wasn’t to study to their mutual benefit, or even to get into her pants – because that would have been understandable, if doomed – but to use her brains and hard work to compensate for his lack of work ethic and mental ability? That had only made her the butt of jokes. Telling a teacher that his question was both rudimentary and stupid, on the other hand, had been the occasion of her first being hauled up in front of the Academic Standards Committee.)

“I apologize,” Jaylah said, stiffly. “I was offensive.”

Gaila’s smile had dimmed momentarily as she instinctively reached slim fingers to touch her visual device. It was a clunky apparatus, though nothing could make Gaila anything other than beautiful. Jaylah was pissed with the entire universe, not blind. 

(And there she went again. At least she hadn’t said it aloud this time.)

“You didn’t mean to be offensive,” Gaila said. “And I haven’t taken offense. The VISOR is still a work in progress, but you’re right, I do see that you’re Jaylah.”

“I suppose there isn’t someone else like me around Starfleet anyway,” Jaylah said.

Gaila’s smile was back. “No, I don’t think so.”

“So,” Jaylah said, because chit-chat was just a waste of time, “you’re supposed to be peer-counseling me. Go ahead, tell me not to be a shit to my roommate. I’ve probably heard it before, though, so if you could keep it short, that’d be great. I’ve got work to do.”

Gaila leaned back in her booth, steepling her fingers against her lips. 

Jaylah sighed (internally). That look probably meant she was in for psychoanalysis. 

(Jaylah hated psychoanalysis more than she hated just about anything else about Starfleet Academy.)

“Do you know why they assigned you to me?” 

Jaylah did not. Was she supposed to? “No. Did you fight with your roommate your first year or something?”

Gaila laughed. She had a delightful laugh. It made the hackles on Jaylah’s neck settle down, just a little. “Well, actually, yes. A little. But I think it was more about our pasts. I’m a fish out of water here too, you know.”

“Because of the VISOR?”

Gaila shook her head. “No, that I got when the _Enterprise_ took damage from the _Narada_. I can’t complain – I’d rather have a war injury than be one of the casualties!”

Jaylah had heard about that battle. Kirk and crew’s first claim to fame. Some of the cadets at the Academy talked about the _Enterprise_ crew like they were galactic holovid stars. Privately Jaylah thought that most of the stories seemed overblown; she’d seen the crew in action, and most of them seemed pretty normal. (In a brilliant sort of way, but then, almost everyone at Starfleet Academy was brilliant.)

But if Gaila was an Enterprise crewwoman, she was special stuff.

“I didn’t fit in here either, back when I first arrived,” Gaila said. “I don’t now either, really, but I’ve learned enough about Starfleet culture to manage. I’m not going to lie to you and say it’s easy, but it can be done. If you’re willing to work hard.”

“I’m always willing to work hard,” Jaylah said, bristling.

Gaila smiled. “Good,” she said, and reached a hand across the table to pat Jaylah’s.

“Is this when you tell me not to lock my roommate out of our room when she’s out all night partying, and if I do, to unlock the door when she starts yelling and pounding on it?”

“Well,” Gaila said, “I was thinking more along the lines of, this is when I tell you how to write an official cultural-sensitivity petition to have you placed in an upper-class dormitory with single rooms.”

Jaylah’s head came up, right away. 

“You won’t get it,” Gaila said. “They take crew-environment training very seriously here. But you _will_ get a hearing, where you can push for a compromise. I’d recommend asking for a reassignment to a non-partying roommate. They’re out there.”

“Is that what you did, when you were a first-year?”

Gaila grinned. She hadn’t let go of Jaylah’s hand. “I was the partying one.”

Jaylah had lots of work to do back in her dorm. (If Marta hadn’t thrown her padd in the toilet as revenge for Jaylah dumping out all her alcohol.) She should try to get going.

Instead, she leaned forward, feeling a smile pull at her lips for the first time in a week. “Tell me more.”

Gaila’s smile really was one of the most beautiful things Jaylah had ever seen.

~

_epilogue_

It took three weeks for Gaila's plan to work, and Jaylah spent most of those nights sleeping on Gaila's couch. (She tried sleeping in the engineering lab, but apparently that was against the rules.)

The afternoon she was officially reassigned to a different dorm and a different roommate (who Jaylah liked, provisionally, and who seemed as studious as Jaylah herself), she moved her few possessions and then went to Gaila's.

"For me?" Gaila said, burying her face in the flowers, as vividly-colored as her hair.

"I wanted to thank you," Jaylah said, feeling stiff and awkward. 

Gaila tilted her chin up, a smile peeking through the petals. "That's sweet."

Dammit, was she that obvious? 

But Gaila didn't seem offended. She wasn't telling Jaylah that her cultural filters were mistaken, or that she had to learn to be less blunt, or that her way of dealing with problems was too aggressive. 

Fuck it. 

Jaylah stepped forward, took the flowers away, and put them on the counter.

Gaila turned out to be not only the most beautiful being Jaylah had ever met, but the best kisser too.

Perhaps Starfleet Academy wasn't so bad after all.


End file.
